My first book project, The Breakdown of Peace, examines the political economy of symbolic national attachments and the emergence of domestic mass violence. The central argument is that the political pursuit of violent fragmentation is less likely to succeed in countries with strong mass media structures, because such structures generate opportunities for political entrepreneurs to successfully deploy inclusive mobilizational appeals on a national scale. This framework thus endogenizes the emergence of intra-state security dilemmas, by describing the structural conditions under which divided group loyalties are more likely to emerge. It also overturns much of the conventional wisdom concerning the relationship between media and collective violence by demonstrating that mass communication networks, which have frequently been blamed for stoking inter-group animosities, can actually serve as powerful forces for domestic peace and stability.